Serrano
MONTICELLO – A Monticello man faces a lengthy prison sentence when he returns to Sullivan County Court in April.
After five hours of deliberation on Tuesday, a jury convicted Carolos Serrano, 24, also known as Jay Menor Serrano, of Monticello, formerly of Brooklyn, of murder, criminal possession of a weapon and reckless endangerment.
Serrano had approached the porch at 62 Park Avenue in Monticello early in the evening of June 28, 2016, and, after asking where his estranged wife and son were, he opened fire, shooting Juan Medina, 28, of Brooklyn.
District Attorney James Farrell called to the witness stand Serrano’s wife and a neighbor; both women identified him as the shooter. A third woman, whose eight-year-old daughter was on the porch, testified that the victim, in his last act before he died, grabbed her daughter and got her out of the line of gunfire and likely saved her life before he collapsed and died in the doorway.
Serrano was taken into custody three hours later at Sleepy Hollow by Monticello Police after they identified a vehicle that was involved in the shooting and witnesses described driving by the house before the shooting.
Inside the car, police found Serrano’s phone, from which forensics investigators were able to find two text messages he had sent to his wife including one on June 19 stating: “I got you… I tell you I don’t want no man around my son.” A text sent 10 hours before the murder said, “You bring some [man] next to my son is over when I see you!!!”
Farrell said Serrano had gone to his estranged wife’s apartment the night before the shooting to “mark his prey” and to confirm that his wife had moved another man into the apartment.
